Getting out of my tangle

A lazy evening listening to the constant rain on the roof of Percy led to an early night as I knew my Tuesday task was a days worth of electicary sorting out.

When I put my two AGM batteries in with the Victron BMV712 and combined it with the Smartbank split charge relay it all got rather difficult to make a tidy install of it in the very limited battery storage space on board Percy.

I made the best of it and was happy with it as it was all under cover. ( I was never really happy with the location of the relay) Being under cover is great until you need to replace one of the batteries - the starter in my case. So with that need as the driver for change I put into action a plan I had been musing over  - going vertical with my wiring.

Yesterday was the mounting board as per my last post. Today I set to taking apart my masterpiece but all was ok as I had a plan !

Look away all readers with an OCD leaning ....

It's OK I had a plan....

Believe it or not the above is not a million miles from what I achieved below.

Quite surprising really that all this makes for a more efficient charging regime and adds some extra functionality (Smartbank and Smartgauge ) 

When we got Percy 8 years ago now the charging system was much simpler and was no doubt installed based on the boat doing many cruising hours each day to support the small overnight usage (no TV gas fridge etc) I think I still have the Sterling split charge diode unit that was robbing close to a full volt from the charging.

I have the measurement now for the cover that will complete the 'improvement' and make what I hope will be a workable solution to the mess that was driven my limited space. I also have a little extra to add that will hopefully restore a little more of Percy's provenance.  

Still a bit more to do. When I put in the new solar controller I put the fuse at the wrong end of the cable run from the batteries to the controller. It should have been at the battery end ( Thanks to Brian from NB Harnser for that advice) When I tried to move the location I did not have enough cable so I need to revisit that install.

All in all a good days work  - now I need to make the cover in the workshop at home ....